IBM Watson

IBM Watson Experience Center

Disclaimer

The following is an excerpt from Local Projects' website regarding a project I worked on while employed as their Senior Motion Designer.

This project in particular was done in collaboration with the IBM Watson ACTS team, and Oblong Industries. I do not claim any ownership over this project, and am posting here in reference to my own contributions to the project while employed at Local Projects.

Overview

The IBM Watson Experience Centers are permanently branded experiences, with locations in New York City, San Francisco, and Cambridge. The centers are invitation only and their primary audience is potential customers of IBM Watson. The collaborative meeting space also serves as educational centers for researchers, students, and media.

Each location acts as a hive of creative and technical Watson activity. The centers are a physical representation of the IBM Watson brand and challenge both misconceptions of AI and visitors’ preconceived notions of IBM and an IBM-er.

Artificial Intelligence Is Everywhere

More than 8.3 billion devices around the world are turning on lights, brewing cups of coffee, and controlling the comfort of our homes with the ease of AI. But, few among us understand how these systems work and even fewer can effectively communicate those ideas to others in a way that is clear and approachable. Challenging ourselves to transform the conversation around Artificial Intelligence — we set out to create a way to explain these complex and technical ideas in a clear, reasoned, and a human voice. Our visitors encompass all levels of technical expertise — from technically savvy CEOs to a student in our local Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools (P-Tech) partnerships — every visitor needs to leave with a clearer understanding of Watson and AI and feel inspired by its potential for society.

Real-World Examples of Ai in Action

We created a collaborative meeting space where clients, researchers, and students learn about Artificial Intelligence with real-world examples of AI working to help people across industries, demystifying AI and reshaping misconceptions in the process. Our 300° immersive room allows humans to see massive amounts data through the lens of machine learning, along with the endless patterns, insights, and opportunities it promises. Our guides invite visitors to look under the hood of AI technology: how we transform terabytes into insights, how we teach our systems to learn, how we train it, and how we utilize it; the power of AI presented with a human perspective.

Data Through the Lens of Machine Learning

Blending storytelling with design, data, and expert-guided interaction, we present immersive AI experiences that are clear, reasoned, and approachable. Every use-case starts with a deep-dive workshop that leverages skills from our product teams, creative and interaction designers and spatial engineers. Over the course of 6 months, our teams iteratively refined the story, interactions, end-to-end prototypes, and spatial engineering to create the applications. Using gesture-based interaction and in-depth data visualizations, we demo how AI systems make decisions and what we are doing with it today — on natural disasters and financial crimes, oil rigs and art galleries, headlines and product lines. The centers are utilized 100% throughout the year during which, the centers present these stories of Watson to thousands of groups, made up of 15,000 visitors, across 25 industries — sparking their imaginations and seeding their knowledge of AI.